Storing a neck

[umcoo]

Hi folks

Would there be any negative effects of a neck being taken off a bass for a long period of time? i.e. months? Would I need to do anything with the truss rod?

Cheers chums

[bigjohn]

I'd loosen the truss rod - clean it, oil it, wrap it in rags and wrap it cardboard and keep it under the bed.

I did that with a neck and it was fine 2 years later. It's back under the bed now

[Ou7shined]

I'm not sure of the correct protocol on this either but I say leave the tr alone, take the neck off, wrap it up safely and leave it and who knows when you come to use it again maybe it will return to it's original under compression from strings state without any need for massive adjustment.
Protect it from extreme conditions - cold, heat, damp etc.

[umcoo]

Thanks guys

[Ou7shined]

Not much help are we.
The reason I say just leave it as is, is that I don't believe you can (under the correct conditions) permanently affect the relief on a neck with the tr. If the neck is lightly adjusted then it's effect while dormant will be negligible IMHO. If the neck has had some major adjustment applied to it to get it playable and you release the tension for storage, you're just going to have to reapply that tension again to get it playable again - only it could take days to get right again.
I have a bunch of necks lying around and none of them had the tr slackened off and I've never had a problem.
Admittedly, it feels right to say that to err on the side of caution you should slacken it off but as I say it hasn't mattered with me. It's a judgement call really.

[umcoo]

I just realised that 'Thanks guys' might have come across as sarcastic...it wasn't meant to!

I think I'll take it off and clean it and see how it goes for a few days and then adjust if required. It's a Warmoth neck and it seems very sturdy (steel reinforcements and all that) so it should be fine.

[Al Heeley]

not sarcastic at all, succinct and to the point. Incidentally anyone here with bass necks sitting under their beds for 2 years, please get them out and sell them to me!

[Ou7shined]

[quote name='Al Heeley' post='865956' date='Jun 13 2010, 02:16 PM']not sarcastic at all, succinct and to the point. Incidentally anyone here with bass necks sitting under their beds for 2 years, please get them out and sell them to me![/quote]
I think geoffbyrne has a couple of RW necks up for grabs.

[Bassassin]

I'd say that if you're not going to use the neck for more than a week or so, definitely [b]do[/b] loosen the truss rod. It's designed to exert counter-pressure against string tension, remove the string tension and all it's doing is distorting the wood.

I found this out to my cost - in actual fact it was a bass I bought which arrived with the neck off. It needed some restoration and for a few reasons, I didn't get around to working on it for several months. By this point the neck had developed a twist, & a hump around the 7th fret that no amount of truss tweaking would remedy. The frets had already been levelled several times so there wasn't enough metal to be able to dress any of the damage out. I had checked it when it arrived and it was fine - just some back-bow from the rod tension.

Not a mistake I'll make twice.

Jon.